Andrew Scott Cairncross, known as A.S. Cairncross, was a scholar of Shakespeare and the English literary renaissance. He is best known for his 1936 book, The Problem of Hamlet (London: MacMillan), which makes a number of controversial arguments about Hamlet

Hamlet

The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

-- arguing, for example, that the play was written around 1588-89 (rather than twelve years later, as most scholars insist), and that the so-called Ur-Hamlet

Ur-Hamlet

The Ur-Hamlet is the name given to a play mentioned as early as 1589, a decade before most scholars believe Shakespeare composed Hamlet...

, to which frequent allusion occurs starting in 1589, is actually an early draft of Shakespeare's play.